Is Substack Really That Bad?

My most viral Mastodon post to date made some waves across the Fediverse recently. In it, I made a seemingly reasonable request:

Please, for the love of anything holy, stop launching your new blog on Substack!

I posted this sub-toot in reaction to seeing yet another writer announcing their new Substack blog. I see these all the time. It seems like every submission to The Writing Cooperative is something cross-posted from Substack.

Look, I get it. Finding an audience isn’t easy, and writers should take advantage of any platform that promises some form of payment. But, here’s the thing, Substack is a ‌bad platform. And it’s been a bad platform for years.

Substack is making waves right now because it somehow convinced someone to invest $100 million at a $1 billion valuation. This finally came after multiple attempts and investment rejections, which eventually caused Substack to beg for money from its users a few years back.

(Are any of those investors getting a dividend on this new valuation?)

I moved my newsletter and blog from Substack to Ghost in 2023 for three reasons:

1. Substack condones hate speech.
2. Substack’s financial model is not profitable.
3. Substack is a bad investment for writers.

In the years since, none of these issues have improved. Let’s take a quick look at where everything with Substack currently stands:

Substack Condones Hate Speech

Despite the Terms of Service professing the opposite, Substack allows hate speech to exist on its platform. Not only that, it actively profits from those who sell subscriptions. To that end, Substack promoted a Nazi blog via push notification. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want my writing to be associated with any of that.

(And, yes, I get the irony of the story being broken by Write Now interviewee Taylor Lorenz, who hosts her publication on Substack.)

Substack’s Financial Model Is Not Profitable

Taking a 10% cut on all paid subscriptions sounds fine, but it doesn’t cover anywhere near the company’s expenses. The company does not make money, which is a problem if you are concerned with the platform sticking around for any amount of time.

It’s doubtful that the recent $100 million influx of cash will change the company’s financial situation. It will likely only highlight Substack’s lack of revenue. After all, those investors will want to make a return on their investment. The easiest (and quickest) way to capture that return? Well, that takes us to point number three.

‌Substack is a Bad Investment for Writers

User monetization is likely Substack’s only path to profitability since it has proven that a 10% cut is nowhere near enough. Charging writers for promotion? Probably coming. Charging readers for a subscription to the platform? I wouldn’t rule it out.

Substack may look like a good option for writers looking to build an audience. But once you look a little deeper, you’ll realize that Substack markets on the hope that you will one day make money off your readers so that it can lock you into the platform.

In 2023, I had to personally request that Substack release my paid subscribers to prevent them from continuing to pay 10% to Substack forever. I understand that this process is only getting more difficult. And, you know what, preventing this release in the future is another monetization option the company may explore (see Patreon if you want a platform already doing this).

The other thing Substack doesn’t tell you is that 10% starts to get really expensive the larger your paying audience gets. This is in contrast to literally every alternative, which scales down in cost per subscriber as the audience grows. So, not only does Substack lock writers in, but it also starts to gouge them. Not ideal.

Need more proof? Molly White has the receipts for nearly every newsletter membership platform out there.

Molly White

Yep. I saved hundreds or even thousands of dollars a month just from switching from Substack to self-hosted Ghost. I pay a roughly flat $85/month now (~$75 for mailsending, $10 for hosting), vs. 10% of all my subscription income. Here’s some napkin math for how expensive Substack is compared to its competitors:

Molly WhiteAlexander Lee

So, to sum everything up, please, for the love of anything holy, stop launching your new blog on Substack! I highly recommend Ghost, which launched version 6.0 yesterday, allowing writers to connect their blog instantly to Mastodon.

Make your transition to Ghost even simpler by using Magic Pages (affiliate). Jannis, the administrator, is super helpful and takes all of the headache out of site management so you can focus on writing. Oh, and his prices? Nowhere near 10%. Starting at just $6/month for a full website and 2,000 emails. Honestly, I’ve never been happier with a webhost.